A loving encouragement to open the heart to the Child Jesus without delay. Instruction how to conduct oneself in solitude and in outward business.
The Thirty-second Letter.
A loving encouragement to open the heart to the Child Jesus without delay. Instruction how to conduct oneself in solitude and in outward business.
May the holy God-Child, Jesus, live in our hearts, and lay down our heart, will, and understanding — yea, our very selves and all that is ours — forever as a footstool of His feet!
O my God! how exceedingly fitting, how exceedingly delighting it is, that we are truly Thine, and no more our own; that Thou alone livest in us, and reignest with free power, and that we only give Thy fair love-life room in us, and submit ourselves to Thy love-alluring beckoning!
Yes, dear sister! I cannot express how it sometimes pains me so, when on the one hand I look at how the ever-blessed God, who has no need of us, so inwardly and ardently longs for us, and draws us to Himself, to make us free, glad, and blessed with His own self, and with His divine love-life; and on the other side, how we set Him so far off, remain so strange to Him, and make so much hesitating, floundering, and resisting about taking in this divine Wooer, and exchanging our wretched life of torment for His fair and sweet love-life.
Quickly, dear sister, open your poor heart to Jesus! The Child Jesus will take it for His lodging. Do not keep this worthy Guest waiting; do not make Him wait so long, until your inn is first clean and fair — that would be an untimely courtesy. Our self-beautifying is only befouling. Where Jesus comes, there holiness comes, there blessedness comes; and there is no other than the one He brings with Him.
This season and these feast-days set before us the revelation of the ardent love of God in the wondrous birth of the sweet Saviour. God's man-loving heart sinks down into our poor humanity, to bring us back again to His Godhead. Now we are akin to God; now God is so near to us; now His heart, love, and fellowship stand open to us. Yea, my God, why do Thy poor creatures not see it, why do they not believe it?
Once more, dear sister! cast yourself with me at Jesus' feet. Quickly! make Him room in your heart, then you have all. Amen, Jesus!
Now, I ought really to have forgotten to answer your welcome little letter; yet perhaps I have already done it in part. I see with pleasure that you seek to turn solitude to good use. That happens only in this: that you strive to cleave to God, to give His workings and His presence room in you, and to let Him rightly set your heart apart and make it solitary. Upon this inner solitude the outer must only aim. You know that it does not depend on any sweet feelings; but this is certain: without self-denial no prayer tastes sweet, and without prayer no self-denial. When one has much time in solitude, one may vary it with a little reading, or with some simple work, or else renew one's devotion with heartfelt remembrances of the divine love-nearness, or with other loving acts of faith, so that one does not grow sluggish or listless. Some movement and outward business is now and then good. It is not the work that brings the harm, so long as only the work is in the hand and in the outward man, but your heart stays within, with God: but when the work presses in through too strong a pleasantness, and the heart goes out with too much devotion and life onto the work, then it all gets confused. Commend yourself to the Lord when you go to your work; take Him, as it were, with you to the work, and let dealings with Him be your secret comfort at the work; then it all becomes a service of God.
Because I am hindered by a visit, I must break off. For five or six weeks I have been so burdened, many times over, with catarrh, little fevers, and headaches, that I am scarcely able to write a few lines. Three or four times I have had days when I thought nature must quite sink under the great affliction of the head; today, God be praised, it still goes on.
No! I do not forget you, my dear sister; your condition is weighty to me, and I am often with you.
German
Der 32te Brief.
Liebreiche Aufmunterung, dem Kindlein JEsu das Herze ungesäumt zu öffnen. Anweisung, wie man sich in der Einsamkeit und beim äußern Geschäfte zu verhalten.
Es lebe das heilige GOtt-Kind, JEsus, in unseren Herzen, und lege unser Herz, Willen und Verstand, ja gar uns selbst und alle das Unsere zum Schemel Seiner Füße auf ewig nieder!
O mein GOtt! wie so höchstgeziemend, wie so höchstvergnügend ist es, daß wir wahrlich dein sind, und nicht mehr unserer selbst; daß du nur in uns lebest, und freimächtig herrschest, und wir nur deinem schönen Liebe-Leben in uns Raum geben, und deinem liebreizenden Wink uns unterwerfen!
— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.
German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).
Translator’s notes
What this letter is. A Christmas letter that turns, in its second half, into a small manual of prayer. The opening is pure Advent longing, breathed as a prayer to the "God-Child": open the heart now, without delay, to the coming Christ. Tersteegen's grief is that we do the opposite — we keep the ardent, "man-loving" God at arm's length and "make so much fuss and struggling" before we will take Him in. His image is the inn of Bethlehem turned inward: do not make the "worthy Guest" wait until your heart is swept clean and fair first, "for our self-cleaning is only befouling — where Jesus comes, holiness comes." The letter then answers something the sister had written about solitude, with counsel that is practical and balanced: the outer solitude serves only the inner; feelings are not the point; "without self-denial no prayer tastes sweet, and without prayer no self-denial"; and even in outward work the heart can "carry the Lord along," so that "it all becomes a service of God." It closes, characteristically, on his own frail health — weeks of fever and headache — and a promise not to forget her.
A few words and echoes.
- "the God-Child" / "the Child Jesus… His lodging." The Bethlehem story (Luke 2:7, "no room… in the inn") read inward: the heart is the inn, and the counsel is to make room now, not to tidy first.
- "this divine Wooer" (göttlicher Buhler). A bold, tender word — Buhler is a suitor or lover; Tersteegen draws on the bridal mysticism of the Song of Songs, God as the ardent lover of the soul.
- "a footstool of His feet." Psalm 110:1 — here the soul freely lays itself down as that footstool.
- "God's man-loving heart… to bring us back to His Godhead." Echoes Titus 3:4 ("the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man") and the Christmas exchange of the Fathers — God becomes partaker of our humanity that we might be made partakers of His (cf. Heb 2:11–14).
- "without self-denial no prayer tastes sweet, and without prayer no self-denial." One of his crisp maxims: the two hold each other up.
- "take Him with you to the work." The practical core of Tersteegen's spirituality — the "practice of the presence of God" (cf. Brother Lawrence) worked out in ordinary labor.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-032 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.